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Fan–or Phony?
Is BOBS-MOM9817 really a stay-at-home mom in Duluth who uses Brand X to clean her floors–or is she an undercover advertising agent working for Brand X?
As if e-mail spam wasn't bad enough, some companies will now post their clients' ad to discussion groups and newsgroups, send Instant Messages with ad content and even "role play" in chat rooms to hype their client's product or service to unaware chatters.
For $75 per hour, one company will visit chat rooms, newsgroups, and other online gathering places that contain potential customers and then talk up the benefits of a company by posing as a satisfied customer. If no one in the chat room takes the bait, they're happy to talk back to themselves. Here's how they describe their services in their own words:
example lets say we are in a chat room we are looged on to that room with at least 2 or more accounts double keyboard or triple connections by mutitasking or single connections after we no the targets we sit in the rooms and get a feel of the rooms one account ask a question the other account answers the question the third account sparks interest and the domain name and the information is talked about with in the room where others have to see the information you can not do this with out someone to talk to other wise you will have trouble for advertizing we do it in a way that we are having a converstaion but it is just one person double or triple keyboarding
Record labels are big fans of advertising in chat rooms. For example, Capitol Records, Elektra Records and Jive Records use the online advertising firm Electric Artists to get people in chat rooms talking about a recording artist. As reported in Time in March 2000, after talking up Christina Aguilera in news groups and on message boards, Electric Artists gave online fans free concert tickets to keep promoting Aguilera's work on the Net.
So are the other chatters in your chat room real–or are they advertising shills? With companies like this in business, you'll never know for sure.
"Online Buzz Helps Album Skyrocket to Top of Charts," by Erin White, staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal.
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Slam Bad Ads! 1. If the thought of chatting with a record label shill posing as a Christina Aguilera fan makes you queasy, write a letter to the record labels below that use this form of advertising. If you know of similar advertising agencies or other companies that hire them, let us know and we'll add them to this page. Capitol Records Elektra Records Jive Records 2. Chat Spam You can't go around accusing everyone who mentions a product in a chat room of being an undercover advertising agent–well, you can, if you don't mind people hating you–but you can do something about ads you receive on AOL Instant Messenger or ICQ. If you receive spam on ICQ, write down the advertiser's ICQ number and send a report to ICQ's abuse desk. If you receive spam on AOL IM, note the sender's screen name and send a report to AOL's abuse desk. ICQ for the PC lets you filter incoming mesages, reject all incoming messages from people not on your list, and reject mass-mailed messages. (If you're on a Mac, you're out of luck.) On AOL Instant Messenger, you can set your preferences to reject messages from people who aren't on your buddy list. Finally, if a company tries to advertise to you in a chat room or by instant message, write them a letter saying that you'd never buy products from a company that engages in intrusive advertising. There are too many to list here, but you can find contact information for most companies at Hoovers or Big Yellow. |
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